For Love Of The Game is a movie fraught with bittersweet ironies, but that doesn't mean you should rush out to see it. The third and least successful instalment in the Kevin Costner Baseball Trilogy that began with the superb Bull Durham and the elegiac Field Of Dreams, For Love Of The Game is a movie about a once-dominant pitcher (the American equivalent of a cricket bowler) who is now far past his prime. That the role of Billy Chapel is played by a once-dominant actor (The Bodyguard, Robin Hood: Prince Of Thieves, The Untouchables, Dances With Wolves) who is now far past his prime is the most striking of the bittersweet ironies that permeate this movie. But like I said, that's not necessarily a good reason to run out and see it.

One reason that For Love Of The Game is not nearly as successful as Field Of Dreams and Bull Durham is because of the role Costner inhabits. In Bull Durham, Costner played a minor-league catcher, a hard-working, likeable guy who simply did not have enough talent to play in the major leagues. In short, he was an Everyman. In Field Of Dreams, he played the archetypal middle-American male, imbued with a reverence for family, tradition and baseball. Again, he was Everyman. But in For Love Of The Game, he plays an ageing jock who is a bit of a lush and who must now learn the hard way that baseball isn't everything. He is rich, he is famous, he sports a championship ring and he has a girl in every port. In a word, he is Everydude. How the audience is supposed to identify or feel sorry for this guy is anybody's guess.

The oddest thing about For Love Of The Game is that it is a sports movie that seems to have been made for people who don't know much about or even like sports. In my own oblique little way, I am trying to suggest that it is a sports movie made for women. Unlike Bull Durham and Field Of Dreams, which are basically movies about the American male's belief in the healing power of baseball - a belief I happen to share - For Love Of The Game is a movie about the healing power of Kristy Swanson.

It is a movie in which an ageing athlete, having walked away from the game he loves after pitching one of the most magnificent games in the history of the sport, cries himself to sleep at night because his girlfriend is moving to London. This, I submit, would never happen in real life; she wouldn't move to London, and he wouldn't cry if she did. Not after pitching a perfect game, in which not a single batter managed to reach base against him. This is a movie that first entices the audience with the possibility that the hero is going to achieve the impossible dream, and then tells us that the dream, while impossible, wasn't all that important. For Love Of The Game? More like For Love Of The Dame.

The unflattering parallels with Bull Durham and Field Of Dreams do not end here. Where the former had wit and style and clever plot twists, and the latter exuded a goofy innocence, For Love Of The Game is calculating and generic, with a screenplay drafted by a committee of script doctors. Of course Costner is going to meet his beautiful girlfriend when her car breaks down on the side of the road; when was the last time a homely woman's car broke down on the Interstate? Of course Swanson will be a writer for Elle who knows absolutely nothing about baseball. And of course she will wear schoolmarmish eyeglasses. How else would we know that she is intelligent?

That's not all. It goes without saying that we will have the fish-out-of-water scene where Swanson comes to Yankee Stadium and feels like an idiot. Of course we will have the fish-out-of-water scene where Costner visits a trendy downtown art gallery and feels like an idiot. Of course she will be a single mother with a rebellious daughter who doesn't trust men. Of course they will learn to love him because he is warm, sensitive and has a fantastic ski lodge in Montana. Of course he will stick his hand inside an electric saw and nearly wreck his career until the love of a good woman pulls him through. Of course all the fans at Yankee Stadium will tawk like dis because New Yawkers in da movies always tawk like dis, even though most New Yawkers woin't actually born dere and tawk like normal people. And of course his best friend will be a spit-and-sawdust yokel with a heart as wide as the Caucasus and a brain the size of a peanut. In the end, this isn't a movie about love or friendship or self-recognition, and it certainly isn't a movie about baseball. It's a movie about every other Strong Silent Type meets Miss Smartypants movie you've ever seen: The Horse Whisperer Bangs The Drum Slowly.

When Kevin Costner took Hollywood by storm in the late 80s, audiences were beguiled by his plodding sincerity, by a winning dumbness that had not been seen since the days of Gary Cooper. Back then, Costner's movies fell into two groups: those in which he merely seemed naive (No Way Out, Field Of Dreams, Bull Durham, Robin Hood) and those in which he seemed like an outright numskull (Dances With Wolves, The Bodyguard, The Untouchables.) But as time went on, this act got tired, and very expensive, and though Costner continued to make big oafish movies (Waterworld, Wyatt Earp, The Postman), the public was no longer interested in seeing them.

For a brief moment (Tin Cup) a couple of years ago it seemed that Costner might be getting his career back on track, but then came the unfortunate Message In A Bottle and now the wan For Love Of The Game. Unlike Billy Chapel, whose career is clearly over at the end of this film, Kevin Costner does not seem to be a pathetic has-been a la Sylvester Stallone or Arnold Schwarzenegger. Far more gifted than those two lummoxes, he seems like the kind of actor who still has a few good things left in store for him if he can only find the right script. For Love Of The Game isn't it.